Physical Modelling of Local Scouring at Complex Bridge Piers

Over the past decades, great strides have been made in the ability to accurately predict design scour depths at simple bridge pier structures. While, many bridge piers are complex in shape, consisting of several components, there is a general lack of confidence in available methods for predicting local scour at complex piers. The main objective of the book is to provide accurate estimations of geometrical characteristics of complex piers and their locations relative to undisturbed streambed on scour depth in order to improve existing scour prediction methods. The results of physical modelling were used to present new methods to predict local scour at pile group, pile cap and column, which is useful in predicting scour at multiple piles and complex piers. Outcomes of verifying these methods show that proposed methods give reasonable scour depth prediction.